Continued advances in photovoltaics are making it possible to generate ever-increasing amounts of energy using solar panels. These advances also help solar energy gain mass appeal from ordinary consumers who wish to reduce their carbon footprint and decrease their monthly energy expenses. However, complete solar panels are typically fabricated manually, which is a time-consuming and error-prone process that makes it costly to mass-produce solar panels in high volumes.
Typical solar panels can be manufactured by constructing continuous strings of complete solar cells, and combining these strings to form a solar panel. A string can include several complete solar cells that overlap one another in a cascading arrangement. Continuous strings of solar cells that form a solar panel exist, and are described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/510,008, filed Oct. 8, 2014, and entitled “Module Fabrication of Solar Cells with Low Resistivity Electrodes.” Producing solar panels with a cascaded cell arrangement can reduce inter-connection resistance between two strips, and can increase the number of solar cells that can fit into a solar panel.
Manufacturing a cascaded panel can involve connecting two photovoltaic structures by edge overlapping the structures so that the metal layers on each side of the overlapped structures establish an electrical connection. This process can be repeated for a number of successive structures until one string of cascaded cells is created. A number of strings are then connected to each other and placed in a frame. One form of cascaded panel, as described in the above-noted patent application, includes a series of strips created by dividing a conventional solar cell into smaller pieces (i.e. the strips). These strips are then cascaded to form a string.
One problem that arises in manufacturing cascaded panels is that precise alignment of strips to ensure proper electrical and physical connections can be difficult. Given the level of precision needed to create a cascaded string, it is not feasible to manufacture such solar panels in volume manually. For example, cascading the strips may involve depositing conductive paste on busbars, and manual application of the conductive paste with high precision and in large volume is not possible.